International roaming lets a mobile subscriber roam to another country without interrupting the service, and the subscriber abroad enjoys the experience as if at home, which facilitates communication and contact between the subscriber and the outside significantly. The existing international roaming technology is primarily based on Customized Application for Mobile Network Enhances Logic (CAMEL) and USSD Call Back (UCB) schemes. Such technologies employ a postpaid international settlement mode. The roaming operator provides an expense list for settlement with the home operator. The settlement mode is based on the credit and agreement between different operators. However, due to settlement delay and arrears, some roaming operators suffer considerable financial losses.
Currently, the method for implementing a local prepaid service of an international roaming subscriber in a mobile intelligent network that includes at least a mobile switching service center and a service control point generally includes the following steps: the local mobile service switching center sends an IDP message through a prepaid service trigger detection mechanism to trigger a local service control point; the local service control point initiates a prepaid service logic according to the IDP message; the local service control point creates a prepaid account corresponding to the international roaming subscriber; and the local service control point monitors the created prepaid account in real time, and contacts the local mobile service switching center to handle the call process. In this way, the charging for the service used by the international roaming subscriber is implemented.
At least the following problems are found in the charging monitoring for the expenses of the international roaming subscriber:
In the existing system, the charging for the consumption amount of the international roaming subscriber accounts for only the expenses generated when the international roaming subscriber applies for the service in the visited network, and the system is unable to obtain the actual balance of the account of the international roaming subscriber in the home network, nor to trigger an intelligent network of the visited network, and therefore, the visited network system is unable to restrict the consumption amount of the international roaming subscriber correctly according to the accounting quota, and unable to monitor the charging for the consumption amount of the international roaming subscriber accurately.